Recently, I received some play items for the kids from Malaysia Toys. It really couldn’t have come at a better time… When you have active children who constantly need to be stimulated and entertained during lockdown, and all confined within the four walls of your home, time goes by a little bit slower (ok fine, a lot!), parental energy levels drain much quicker, and the number of coffees needed each day increases exponentially!
As hard as it is for us adults, understandably it is also hard for the kids, who would love to go to the park for a run, or to mingle with their friends. Instead, they are cooped up at home, so we as parents, try our best to find activities to keep them engaged.
Supporting local businesses
Malaysia Toys is the leading online toy store in Malaysia for locally made, assembled and curated educational toys. What I really love about this website is that by purchasing any toys from here, you are supporting local mamas and their businesses and that is what we really need to do right now to support the local economy.
Let’s get started with Malaysia Toys
One afternoon, we sat down to unbox the items. We started with the ‘Let’s party’ busy box and also the ‘Let’s party’ busy book. As soon as my two year old laid eyes on the busy book, she couldn’t wait to get started. She loves doing activities like puzzles and matching, so this busy book was right up her alley. The busy book is made up of ten laminated pages, each containing a different activity to challenge the child cognitively. The theme for this book was food – every page had something enticing – think cupcakes, fruits, cookies, ice cream, pizza! It totally kept my little one fully engaged. She had a great time matching colours to the cupcakes, chocolate chip cookies to their numbers and fruit skins to the correct fruits. She even did a pizza puzzle and learnt sequencing by building a burger according to the picture sequences given.
Busy box
Next up, we moved on to the busy box and boy did the girls squeal in delight when they saw the items in there. Colourful play dough, a box of ‘ice cream’, coloured ‘rice’ and ‘pasta’ and various tools and materials to create their own ice cream, cupcakes and pizzas. The girls naturally gravitated to the box of ‘ice cream’ first. The moment my five year old opened the box up, she exclaimed: “This smells so good, like real ice cream!”. There was even an ice cream scoop and cup provided, so she wasted no time in scooping up ‘ice cream’ for everyone, and even offering ‘sprinkles’ (coloured rice). Besides the ‘ice cream’ dough set, there were also more packets of coloured play dough for them to get creative with. They used the rolling pin provided to roll out their dough, and spent a good time ‘cooking’ up a storm. After a while, I was presented with my ‘dinner’! A pepperoni pizza, some delicious looking cupcakes and a donut too… yums! All the dough is handmade with taste safe materials (but of course we didn’t eat the dough!). Warning though, it does get a little bit messy, so you might want to put a mat to speed up the cleaning process later on.
After cleaning up, we moved on to the next activity, which aims to promote counting in younger kids and maths skills in older kids. We used the coloured straws to count and match it to the correct number on the donut (for the younger one) while we used the straws as counters to help with addition and subtractions (for the older one). Definitely made learning a little bit more fun!
There were two other activities in the box – matching the ice cream sequences to the cards provided and alphabet recognition using coloured rice, both of which was enjoyed by the little one.
Dim sum anyone?
We also received a dim sum steamer tray with three pieces of siew mai (meat) dumplings, made entirely out of felt. These were the cutest things ever! Both girls took turns being chef and ‘steamed’ the dumplings for me in their toy kitchen and we had a good time ‘eating’ it and I just wished we had more. Am definitely eyeing the satay and sushi felt set I saw on the website!
Learning through play
I love how the activities inspire the kids to use their imagination and get creative, while improving their cognitive, motor and sensory skills all at the same time. And the best part is that the materials can be reused over and over again. The girls were kept occupied the whole afternoon, and don’t we all need that moment of peace and quiet once in a while?
You can find out more about the items here.
Looking for more ideas to engage the kids at home? Have a look at our DIY craft here and how to grow your own edible garden here.
Malaysia Toys sponsored all the items above. As always, our opinion is honest and our own!
